HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Yes! I remember with 100% clarity when SE announced that FFXIV would have a totally REVOLUTIONARY type of quests called "levequests" (just like the revolutionary AH called personal retainer). And I LOVINGLY FONDLY remember how I re-captured the same ******* "Imp XYZ" for the 36th time, which had escaped for the 36th time from the very same prison ward in Gridania. It would have been so much soo much more effective to finally replace those bamboo bars with steel ones, but...

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Yes! I remember with 100% clarity when SE announced that FFXIV would have a totally REVOLUTIONARY type of quests called "levequests" (just like the revolutionary AH called personal retainer). And I LOVINGLY FONDLY remember how I re-captured the same @#%^ing "Imp XYZ" for the 36th time, which had escaped for the 36th time from the very same prison ward in Gridania. It would have been so much soo much more effective to finally replace those bamboo bars with steel ones, but...

The premise of the leves need to be changed themselves. The "@#%^ing Imp XYZ", I'd have to agree should be a one time storyline quest. Whereas the leves should be better imagined as "clear xyz mobs" and simple as that.

XIV's version of FFXI's Fields/Grounds of Valor, more or less. From what I hear, that was well-received in XI.

I really don't see how leves solve the problem of XP, either. I mean, they're basically just repeatable quests. Lots of games, including FFXI, have them. And it's not like you can't XP by killing monsters outside of leves.

Well sure you can, but I would imagine they want leves to be more efficient than that.

[Leves are] XIV's version of FFXI's Fields/Grounds of Valor, more or less. From what I hear, that was well-received in XI.

Leves are indeed FFXIV's of Fields of Valour, and it happens that FFXIV's version is terrible, mostly due to the overbearing presence it has in the game. I'll elaborate:

Unlike leves, Fields of Valour wasn't a central part of FFXI's design. FoV took the form of innocuous little books tucked somewhere in a zone rather than huge campsites comprising a majority of a maps' landmarks. Furthermore, FoV was a once-a-day bonus, a useful supplemental reward on top of what you were already doing, whereas in FFXIV it was just about the only thing you were doing -- the main focus, as it were.

FoV, perhaps because of its innocuousness, was actually so much more lore-friendly: rather than re-capture that same escaped Imp 36 times (as another poster mentioned), you just train yourself by focusing on certain species of monsters; rather than re-clear the land of the same crop-eating respawning dodos 36 times, you just train yourself by focusing on certain species of monsters. FoV was simple, but certainly effective; its reason for being justified itself quite well.

The fact that FoV was merely laid on top of FFXI's already rich environment made it much more interesting to complete, at that. Rather than FFXIV's penchant for having the UI mark with a huge red circle the monsters I need to beat, which would invariably appear quite close to me as soon as I accept the objective, in FFXI I would have to select a FoV page and then actually look for them! Maybe I have to kill a bat for a FoV objective -- well, I'd better check caves, or perhaps wait until night, and maybe I'd start to make a nice routine for myself, get to know the lay of the land, or discover a neat nook for myself that allowed me to train with a great efficiency. Not so in FFXIV, whose leves truly are little more than a game of follow-the-arrow with a wall-of-text thrown on top that, after the first time completing it, usually doesn't even make sense anymore.

In short: make leves simple, keep them in the background, and they'll be a nice supplement to a vibrant world. Make leves central, have the game revolve around their repeated completion, and their weak foundations and countless flaws will show through very quickly.

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"Thus opium is pleasing... on account of the agreeable delirium it produces." (Burke para.6)

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I really don't see how leves solve the problem of XP, either. I mean, they're basically just repeatable quests. Lots of games, including FFXI, have them. And it's not like you can't XP by killing monsters outside of leves.

Well sure you can, but I would imagine they want leves to be more efficient than that.

At the point where you have given up on your content being fun, and resigned it to being efficient, that is the point at which you should stop designing games. If open world XPing is boring, the answer is not gimmicky chores that are also boring -but!- faster! That just wastes tremendous development resources to create this content. The answer is to figure out why your core gameplay experience isn't fun and fix it.

Granted, as I've said before, RPGs are definitively a genre that provide no guidance on how to achieve this, and lately we're starting to see that reflected a lot in bad gameplay.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

I dont understand how they can only be releasing one new job. Some people say they have other stuff to work on. But all the jobs they have are near identical to the ones in FFXI. And now they are brining Summoner into the mix, another job from FFXI. So if they are just going to bring back jobs from FFXI there shouldnt be that much work involved in doing so, its not like theyre coming up with something all new. I would have expect 6+ jobs to be released with 2.0.

It's not a simple cut and paste job. The mechanics of XIV and XI will be totally different. If you had built 20 kinds of cars in your life, and I asked you to make a few of them again with modern parts, it might not take you as long as it did the first time, but your work would certainly not be 'mostly already done.'

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Still: 1 new job/class in 2 years, and still no thief-thing, that's less than you would expect. Unless the redesign of the old classes is super awesome with massive changes to how each one feels and plays. Which, after seeing the LNC-centric gameplay demo, I doubt.

Btw, did they get rid of the horrible "TSCHCLONCKKKK!!!" confirmation sound?

I'm usually the first one to complain when they don't add classes. I pretty much believe that if you can't shake out a couple of cool new classes each expansion, you're doing something wrong. And I would expect the addition of several classes if 2.0 succeeds on any measure. However, considering they have to rework all of the existing classes already, and all of those changes will be ultimately irrelevant to the game's success beyond the wider implications of the battle system, I think they can be forgiven for not investing further development time in new classes. They legitimately have their hands full, and anything that won't impact every user experience positively is a sacrifice that needs to be made right now. Considering every player will have other classes to play, and new classes would probably be played be a relatively small percentage of players, this is a prudent decision. They need to ensure that the core gameplay experience is a success before investing development time in the luxury items.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Still: 1 new job/class in 2 years, and still no thief-thing, that's less than you would expect. Unless the redesign of the old classes is super awesome with massive changes to how each one feels and plays. Which, after seeing the LNC-centric gameplay demo, I doubt.

Btw, did they get rid of the horrible "TSCHCLONCKKKK!!!" confirmation sound?

I can't go look because I'm at work but check out the alpha vid on guildleves, I believe there is some menu selections there that might answer that for you.

Will the jobs have different moves and spells in 2.0? I leveled Black Mage in XI and XIV and I didnt see much difference other than new looking graphics and different effects/levels you get spells/names. But the basics are still there, the Ranger shoots the bow, the White Mage Cures, the Paladin tanks with def and hp, ect. What im saying is, jobs like Thief, Summoner, Samurai already exist. If they are going to be using similar jobs to XI then it should be easy to implement them in the game whereas coming up with an entirely new class with a different style of playing than the others before, like the Rune Fencer in XI might be, would be harder. But I guess we are back to the point, again, that SE messed the game up so bad to begin with that they truly had no time to put in more than just one job and I just thinks thats a shame because new jobs are very exciting and would be greatly welcome in addition to the fixing of the many problems which should have never had in the first place.

And yes I am excited to give 2.0 a try when it comes out but I think my feelings are justified. Perhaps if they announce new jobs on the horizon shortly after the release of 2.0, *In an update not an expansion you have to buy*, then I will feel differently.

The stuff you're talking about is concept work, and that's the easiest part. I can create two brand new class concepts a day every day this week. Boom, 14 new classes. They'll all be unique and cool in their own right, too.

Then, someone has to design the class abilities, create graphics and sound effects for the abilities and the player motions, create class-specific quests(including writing)/equipment/other content, define and balance the algorithms that will determine the class's performance, and actually implement all that stuff in the game.

So yes, they have about 5% of the work already done for any given class.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

The jobs are not just exclusive to FFXI, they're FF staples. Well, except for maybe FF13.

The jobs play different enough that they pretty much only have the same name. Playing PLD in FFXI and PLD in FFXIV is entirely different.

You never had to do skillchain combos in FFXI to keep hate, did you? BLMs have Convert, they never had that in FFXI*.

*Okay, well yeah, they have it now. I left when the game's level cap was still 75.

Point being that even if jobs share the same name, FFXIV still plays much differently than FFXI does. And that was 1.0 talking, they changed the abilities up again since we have more buttons to use with the new drag/drop interface. Who knows?